Dairy Board offshoot expands

Press, 12 October 1988, Page 6

Dairy Board offshoot expands

From

TONY VERDON,

in London

The Dairy Board’s fast-expanding West German subsidiary, General Milk Products, yesterday opened a big new plant near Hamburg.

The company is broadening its range of products and will play a key part in .the board’s strategy to retain a place in the affluent European market. It trades in a range of European dairy products, including butter, cheese, special protein blends, and casein. The firm also sells New Zealand dairy products developed for the German market, and mixes of New Zealand and European dairy products for the food ingredients industry. But from its new headquarters, the firm will start selling dairy-based animal remedies developed by the board’s

American subsidiaries. The trading of New Zealand cheese, butter and milk powders, much of it to the Eastern Bloc, will also be handled through the new offices in Hamburg. The general-manager of General Milk Products, Mr Mike Roeseler, said the firm had moved from rented office accommodation in down-town Hamburg to what had been a bottling plant. The plant had been refurbished, with offices, a 2000 square metre warehouse and a 300 tonne cold store. The new complex would give the company greater control over its own destiny by housing

all operations under one roof, he said. “Stocks will be in our own stores and handled by our own people,” he said. The firm began as an agent employed by the dairy board, but that developed in 1974 to a joint venture with the agent. The company began trading in products from countries other than New Zealand five years ago, and is now one of the main European dairy traders. The volume of New Zealand and non-New Zealand casein and caseinate make it one of the four largest suppliers of milk protein products in Europe.